Fred Barnes is on his high horse again, accusing Barack Obama of being the “know-nothing-in-chief” because, in Barnes’s view, Obama knows nothing about “free market” economics.
Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there’s growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week’s presidential press conference, he’s undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues.
Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That’s too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession–that’s not too much to ask.
But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government “has the resources to jolt our economy back into life.” He hasn’t retreated, in words or policies, from that view.
The fetishizing of the “free market” seems to be almost totally reality-resistant. I guess that’s why it’s a fetish.
First, there’s that misnomer, “free market.” There is no such thing as a “free market,” Echidne points out — a bit more gently than I just did:
There’s that free market animal again. It might come as a surprise to Mr. Barnes, but the concept of ‘a free market’ is not terribly common in economics. There are unregulated markets, true, and there are what economists call competitive markets.
But an unregulated market is not necessarily a competitive market and truly competitive markets are a little less common in [the] real world than in the conservative religion which worships the Jealous God of something called free markets.
Zandar, of Zandar and the Stupid, takes up that resistance to reality thing I mentioned above (emphasis in original):
… Fred Barnes and the TAXEN CUTTEN UBER ALLES brigade had their time. They had a President that implemented the policies that Barnes wanted to see: tax cuts for the wealthy, blank-check spending on the Defense Department, massive deregulation (and refusal to enforce existing regulations), and the belief that only the private sector has real solutions.
The result of eight years of the economic policies that Fred Barnes and other conservatives shamelessly continue to advocate even now was the financial crisis and 18 month long Great Recession we’re in today. John McCain, the candidate that wanted to continue these same disastrous policies, went before the American people and infamously declared the “fundamentals of our economy are strong” the morning before the economy nearly self-destructed. At the very minimum, the American people rejected these policies as gross incompetence bordering on dereliction of duty, and Fred Barnes is accusing Obama of economic illiteracy? Really? Where is Barnes’s credibility to make that decision, exactly?
After trillions of dollars of wealth were wiped out globally and millions of jobs lost and lives ruined, thousands of businesses forced to slash production and hours and personnel, hundreds of local governments facing financial ruin and dozens of states having to cut the most basic services just to survive as a direct result of conservative economic policies of the Bush administration, how can Fred Barnes accuse anyone other than himself of not understanding basic economics?
It’s ludicrous to the point of absurdity.
I love how Steve Benen starts out responding to Barnes’s nonsense: “Fred Barnes doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” So true. Steve continues:
Conceit is nearly always unseemly, but it takes a smug fool with misplaced arrogance to be truly offensive.
The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes devotes his latest column to bashing President Obama’s economic policies. That, in and of itself, is unremarkable. Barnes is a Bush/Cheney Republican, and Obama isn’t. They’re bound to see economic policy differently.
What’s striking, though, is how Barnes presents his argument. Instead of simply making the case against the administration’s policies, he feels comfortable arguing that Obama is “an economic illiterate,” the “Know-Nothing-in-Chief,” and a leader lacking “even a sketchy grasp of economics.” This from a shameless conservative hack who has never demonstrated any proficiency in any area of public policy.
Steve takes on Barnes’s objection to Pres. Obama’s concern with the huge profits reaped by insurance companies, and with the fact that Wall Street has not changed the practices and behavior that led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression:
This, Barnes argued, is evidence of a president who doesn’t understand economics. But that’s absurd. Obama raised concerns about changing the behavior and practices of banks, because the president would like to avoid things going to back to the way they were — conditions that led to the collapse of the economy in the first place. He objected to health insurance companies making “record profits,” because American families are struggling badly with rising health care costs. If Barnes disagrees, fine, but the president’s concern is hardly evidence of ignorance.
Barnes does have one fan in MacRanger (linked from Memeorandum), who gives us the same ignorant garbage in shortened form and with less surface polish.
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